September 2011 Archives

We are now slap bang in the middle of the potato harvest.  Every day Hannah, our technologist at Nene Potatoes, collects a sample from each grower and on the following morning we receive a quality report detailing how much mechanical bruising we have on our potatoes.

The system is very transparent, all of the members are able to see one another's results.  Every day is like A level results day.  Obviously we want to make sure that we are not damaging our potatoes but, even more importantly, we want to be better than the other members of the group.

We haven't had any rain here for ages and the soil is as dry as dust.  When you combine this with the high percentage of dry matter that some potato varieties have this year, it makes for very difficult harvesting conditions.

The thing about potato bruises is that they don't show up for a few days.  You can easily, ignorantly and blissfully devalue 200 tonnes of potatoes a day by £60 per tonne if you change any aspect of your harvesting regime.

Every day we are making minor changes to our mechanical system based on our results - slowing down a belt here, speeding up a roller there, adding a rubber flap, taking off a rubber flap, trimming a rubber flap and putting it on again, taking off a rubber flap and putting on a longer bit of rubber and then putting it on again, taking it off again, trying a thinner piece of rubber, trying a thicker piece of rubber, mounting it a bit higher....and at a slight angle.....and back how it was, kicking the rubber flap.  You get the idea.  It's a nightmare.

Hannah's hard work is a key benefit of being part of Nene Potatoes.  It is better to be worrying about the problem while we are in a position to influence the outcome.

We are proceeding very cautiously in Maris Piper with a dry matter of 23 and the results seem acceptable and consistent.  I still feel a little anxious when I open the spreadsheet each morning.

I went to Leeds last weekend to stay with my favourite lovebird newlyweds Boy Bedford and Bride Bedford.  It was brill to see them. 

On Sunday we had a chilled out wander around a food fair in Saltaire.  This is a Victorian "model town" built around a wool mill by the proprietor Titus Salt.  It has the water-powered mill at its heart with high quality workers homes, park, shops, church and recreational facilities.  It was built out of local stone and is as desirable a place to live now as it would have been 150 years ago.  Good old Titus Salt, I say.  We could do with modern industrial developments like this now constructed around a renewable energy source and with a strong sense community and a united purpose.

You have to admit, the Victorians were bloomin' excellent.  I wish that I had been a Victorian. A rich, brainy and lucky Victorian though and not one of the small, poor and chimney sweepin' Victorians.  I would have been a good Victorian, I think.  I would have really gone to to town on the facial hair.

We can't hold a candle to those philanthropic industrialists these days.  We haven't got a clue.  What will they call us lot in the future?  Cruncharians probably.

Anyway.  I left my dog with Jules and Penny while I was away and left his bed and food at their house.  I got a text from Jules while I was driving to Yorkshire.

"Tesco Finest Dog Food? WTF? Lol. I'm going to swap my dinner for Wooster's. LMFAO PMPL ROFL winking smiley"*

*as ever the text acronyms were added by me to make Jules look trendy

**(except WTF. He did actually put that)

The Benefits Office, sorry Rural Payments Agency, is currently checking that it made the correct payments to farmers between 2005 and 2009. 

As you will be unsuprised to hear, they made rather a Horlicks of it.  In some cases they are now in the embarrassing position of having to ask farmers to pay back money that they received as long as six years ago.

I have never been able to get an accurate statement of entitlements from the RPA so I have never actually known what we should have been paid each year.  I was rather worried that they were going to ask us for money back.  When the scheme started we were only getting £5k per year but (as historical entitlements fell and sugar beet compensation was included) this has crept up to nearly £30k per year.  They could have asked us for a cheque for £20 000 and I would have had no way of defending myself.

Anyway.  It transpires that we have been underpaid in every year of the scheme apart from one.  They paid us £7000 out of the blue the other day.

According to voters in a British Food Fortnight competition, Lincolnshire has been voted "Britain's Favourite Food Spot." 

It would be immodest to claim that the shepherd's pie that I made at the weekend had any bearing on the result but, let's face it, it did, didn't it.

We have several famous Lincolnshire recipes, as a rule these are based around lowly cuts of meat.  So you want to jump on the bandwagon now, do you?  You want to eat like a Lincolnshire person.  Well here's is a video demonstrating how you make stuffed chine.  I'll warn you, the music on the video sounds fine for a start but after a minute it turns into a form of torture.

So. Part two in the news incident which has quite literally rocked our peaceful market town of Spalding to its very core.  The article in the Free Press about Hedgehoggate came out yesterday.  Here's the story you've been waiting for

It was a bit of a damp squib as it turned out.  The so-called "amazing quote" that the defendant gave was

"When you've got to go, you've got to go"

Look.  I've heard amazing quotes.  I've made amazing quotes, for goodness sake. "When you've got to go, you've got to go" is not an amazing quote. 

The judge's advice was equally disappointing, he just said that the chap should "go out of sight in future".  That's not very specific, is it?  What about the poor hedgehog.  Surely he meant "go out of sight and NOT on hedgehogs"

All in all, as far as the hedgehog is concerned, there are more questions than answers here.

The one part of the story that really caught my eye was the remark from Deborah Cartwright, the prosecuting lawyer .."the officer looked at the ground where Ford had been squatting and saw fresh human faeces on top of a dead hedgehog" 

Fresh, you say?  FRESH!!!???? There are many adjectives that could be used in a sentence describing a dead hedgehog with a turd on it, but come on.  Seriously.  How many people would have selected the word "FRESH" in those circumstances.  I am relieved that Deborah became a lawyer and not a greengrocer.

I like to think that this blog is the antidote to the Field Day blog.  Tim and Rachel are the queen and king of animal whimsy so it would be pointless to try to compete.  We specialise in the animal stories that end up in their waste paper basket, the ones that they would reject for reasons of taste or decency.

Like this one from the Lynn News.  Victor Ford, 34, received a court summons and a fine of £200 this week for pooing on a dead hedgehog.  This happened in Spalding, Lincolnshire (where I went to school) and it happened on July 3rd (the day after my birthday).  That's as far as my connection to the story goes.  I probably shouldn't have disclosed that I was even that involved.  If anything, I ought to be distancing myself from the story, it's reasonably unglamorous after all.  Even for Spalding. 

The story was also covered on the Spalding Today website under the sub-heading "Crime."  You get a bit more detail in the Spalding Today article.  The "crime" happened at 1.20pm, for instance. I don't know why I put "crime" in inverted commas there.  It makes it sound as though I'm defending what he did.  I'm no lawyer, maybe it is a crime to pooh on a dead hedgehog.  I'm certainly not suggesting it's a good thing.  I wouldn't do it.

Anyway.  Justice was served and the district judge, John Stobart, fined the bloke £100 and ordered him to pay £85 costs and a £15 victim surcharge.  I'm not sure where the £15 goes.  Maybe to the family of the hedgehog.

The best bit was the line

• See Tuesday's Lincolnshire Free Press for the amazing quote Ford told the arresting officer and the advice the judge gave Ford should the situation ever arise again.

How's that for a teaser campaign.  I don't know about you but I can't wait to hear Victor's "amazing quote."  He sounds like a bit of a rebel so I can't imagine just how brilliant it will be. I'm guessing that the judge's advice will be less amazing - they are quite a serious bunch, those judges.  It will be something like

"I suggest that if you find yourself in this position again then you should go to a public toilet and not defecate on some dead wildlife."  That's the sort of thing that a judge would say.

My parents have a copy of the Lincolnshire Free Press delivered on a Tuesday so I will tell you the "amazing quote" then.  If you can guess what it is before then I'll buy you a bottle of champagne (or shampoo, if you're teetotal).

Although we have finished planting the last field of daffodil bulbs and the bulk of our summer flower business is winding to close, I still had an early start this morning.  I had to get up to clean the house before my cleaner came. I know that his sounds like bourgeios and obsessive compulsive disorder behaviour; it isn't like that at all.  It's usually all I can do to remember to pick my pants up before she comes.  Today the house was in a particular state.

I've got some building work going on at home.  I have finally got the builders here to revamp the back part of the house.  I am installing a wetroom/utility room fusion; a concept that I have named "the Wetrootility Room TM".  I have visions of coming home from work in my usual filthy state and dealing with my dirty clothes and dirty body in a single, luxurious spa experience.  Every farmer should have one.  The existing downstairs washroom will become my office/snug or "the Snofficug TM" I will have a comfy chair, walls of book shelves a window over the garden and my big new iMac.  This is where I will drink peppermint tea and write for you once I have cleaned body and soul in the Wetrootility Room (see, you are catching on to the lingo already)

This is taking a lot of vision and patience at the moment.  Up until very recently the rear of my home had housed the National Collection of Artexed Ceiling Patterns.  When I got home yesterday the National Collection of Artexed Ceiling Patterns was sitting in skip outside and the house was covered in a thick layer of dust.  While the ceilings were coming down, the plaster was being removed from the walls and the floor was being chopped up, I decided it was finally time to get into the safe that I locked myself out of two years ago. 

There was a very big safe in the house when I arrived, the family that lived here previously were jewellers.  I am not a jeweller; when I moved in the contents in the safe became far more modest.  It was basically just sentimental stuff in there - my childhood coin collection, my certificate for best Scotch egg at the Young Farmers Rally 1994, that sort of thing.

Anyway.  I locked myself out of the safe. Somehow. It's a long story involving my own incompetence. I engaged two locksmiths over a period of a year with no success.  I decided it was time to call my mate Rob who is a total Mr Fix It.  This safe is made from concrete mixed with tungsten fillings sandwiched between two bits of 10mm hardened steel plate - it's a good 'un, like.  He cut in through the top with a petrol engined disc cutter and then got a jack hammer.

Calling Rob was always the nuclear option, his brief included a special dispensation to make as much noise and mess as necessary.

This is why I am up early and brandishing a mop.

I have a couple of lodgers living with me at the moment.  Basically I'm Rigsby

We were watching tv the other night, I think it was Have I Got News For You, and there was a mention of Marathon chocolate bars changing their name to Snickers.

"I didn't know that they used to be called Marathons" said James

"No, I didn't" said Matt (Matt the Second, that is.  It gets a bit confusing)

"WTF!" said I (Matt the First or Matt Classic, if you prefer).  I actually said the exclamation mark as well; that's how shocked I was.

For one thing, I thought they only changed the name about 12 months ago.  I still call them Marathons.  My lodgers are both fully-grown, adult males.  They are taller than me for heaven's sake.  How can they not know this Snickers/Marathon stuff.  What the hell are they teaching kids in History classes these days?

If they don't know that then there is no possible hope of them knowing who Rigsby is.

Random phone call in the office just now

"I'm trying to contact the Mr Naylor who's an auctioneer and surveyor"

I was quite tempted to say

"Speaking" just to se where it led me.  I've got plenty on at the moment but I could just fancy having a dabble at autioneering.  I wish I was more adventurousin these situations